Power control startup gets strategic support

LONDON -- Powervation Ltd. (Cork, Ireland), a fabless semiconductor company that produces digital control chips for power converters, has announced the closing of a Series C round of financing led by Semtech Corp. and with support from Enterprise Ireland

The latest round, worth $7 million, is intended to fund business growth and the adoption of its digital power control chips by makers of data center and communications infrastructure equipment, the company said. The funding reportedly brings the amount invested in Powervation to $27 million.

Enterprise Ireland, the Irish economic development agency, joined the funding round with an R&D investment intended to allow Powervation to strengthen its design team and accelerate product development. The amount of money Enterprise Ireland is contributing was not disclosed.

Powervation, founded in 2006, has a product called Intelligent Digital Power that provides adaptive compensation of power supplies to optimize performance under different load conditions. The company also provides a graphics-based design tool called PowerSmart to allow customers to program the digital control logic.

The company said it has momentum in the communication and server computing markets where its PV3201 controllers are being adopted.

"This funding round will help fuel that market momentum and enable us to accelerate our commercial build-out as a company," said Mike McAuliffe, CEO of Powervation, in a statement.

"Powervation's singular focus on realizing the opportunity of digital power management is one that we are glad to further invest in. Their digital controllers also support the Intel VR12.x specification which requires a highly flexible architecture aimed at delivering system performance and efficiency gains," said Damien Callaghan, investment director at Intel Capital, in the same statement.